It was a family of fishermen who, in the winter of 1864–65, discovered the pile-dwelling site off Sipplingen in the shallow water. To this day, the Stone Age village – first investigated by the Überlingen historian Xaver Ullerberger – remains the largest prehistoric lakeside settlement on Lake Constance.

A systematic excavation below the water level did not take place until the winters of 1929 and 1930. The archaeologist Hans Reinerth from the Institute of Prehistory in Tübingen had a caisson placed over the excavation site and the water pumped out. As the water level is lower in winter, less water had to be displaced than would have been the case in summer. This meant that the archaeological investigations could be carried out under the same conditions as on land. The Lake Constance Historical Society provided financial support for the project. The excavation revealed the locations of houses from two different periods. There were therefore two settlements that had been built directly on top of one another at a certain interval. In addition, more than 1,000 artefacts were recovered and scientific studies on the fauna and landscape history were carried out.

Five of the Sipplingen lake-dwelling houses were reconstructed in Unteruhldingen between 1938 and 1940. The floor plans, partition walls and clay floors were modelled on the older Sipplingen settlement. Meanwhile, the external walls and roofs, the locations of the ovens and hearths, and the benches are based on the findings from investigations in the Federsee moor (Riedschachen, Aichbühl, Taubried). The remains of a fence consisting of three rows of posts, found in Sipplingen, were expanded into a strong fortification for the reconstruction, inspired by the excavations of Bronze Age gates and palisades at Federsee (Wasserburg Buchau) and in Poland (Biskupin). The largest building in the complex, the village hall, was modelled on examples from Aichbühl and Riedschachen.

In the course of the research at Sipplingen, 16 successive settlement layers spanning a total of 3,000 years have now been identified. As early as the Neolithic period, the community living there maintained trade links with the Baltic Sea, France and Italy. Dendrochronological analyses of the timber used in construction revealed that the village consisted of almost 100 houses in 3710 BC.

Since 1982, regular underwater archaeological surveys have been carried out at the Sipplingen pile field, as modern port facilities and erosion are severely damaging the archaeological layers. Part of the site has now been covered with geotextiles and gravel to enable future research.